RNC Chair Announces GOP Plot to Infiltrate Minority Communities With Propaganda

Republicans are going to rebrand via the “Growth and Opportunity Project” by winning the “emotional and cultural” votes. WOO HOO!

During an interview on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, Luke Russert asked RNC Chair Reince Priebus how the Republican Party is going to change the impression that they exist only to give tax breaks to the rich when Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)’s budget is the same-old-same-old bend over for the wealthy. Priebus dug down into his we’re-so-clueless bag and retrieved some misogyny and racism as a huge surprise reply. See, the math is all good in Reince’s world. It’s those darn 47%ers who are “emotional and cultural”. (Waving hello to women and brown skinned minorities!)

But he has a plan: The big plan is to pay workers to infiltrate these minority communities in order to compete with Obama’s unpaid workers, “You have to have the resources to be able to have an effective ground operation in minority communities…. I’m looking to get in the communities by the hundreds with paid people to make the case for the Republican Party.”

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

Watch here via MSNBC:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Priebus, “We’re not losing the issues on the math. We’re not losing the issues on spending and debt and jobs and the economy. Those are total winners for us. But what we found in the election is that while we’re winning those arguments on spending and math, we’re losing this sort of emotional/cultural vote out there in presidential elections and it didn’t just happen overnight. The fact is our Party has had a tough time over the last 24 years winning decisive presidential elections. And it’s our job as a party to get to the bottom of why that is.”

Then Russert brought up former RNC Chair Michael Steele’s criticism that so long as Republicans are pursuing policies that hurt minorities like Voter ID laws, they don’t stand a chance to win them over. Reince, who understands minorities as well as he does women, smirked and scoffed because of course, Michael Steele knows nothing about black voters.

Also, mean old Obama is organized (probably because being a community organizer has real responsibilities or something) and Republicans can’t possibly get minority voters since they are not organized, “You have to have the resources to be able to have an effective ground operation in minority communities…. I’m looking to get in the communities by the hundreds with paid people to make the case for the Republican Party.” So, people being paid by the rich party will infiltrate the minority communities and the reason they didn’t do this before is that they, party of SuperPACs and corporate money, didn’t have the “resources”.

Never mind that Obama’s ground operation is run by volunteers who are not paid, and they are there by the thousands, not the hundreds. They do not need to be paid in order to pretend to be a part of the community because they are the community.

Priebus, “We’re not competing with the DNC, Luke. We’re competing with Barack Obama’s organization that is a granular, community-based organization that’s perpetual in its nature. And the fact is we have to get with it and do the same thing and try to do it even better.”

Russert then called the National Review the “professional right”, while asking Priebus about their criticism that the few policy changes he’s calling for are “shallow and opportunistic.”

Priebus argued that the RNC isn’t calling for policy changes so much because they have to focus on the things they have control over (image). Priebus doubled down on their immigration reform efforts, while ignoring the fact that he can’t call for policy changes because the party refuses to change their policies. They still think they can win over Hispanics by tweaking their immigration reform policies to be less insulting than they used to be.

Priebus continued, “The perception that the GOP does not care about people is doing great harm to the Party and its candidates on the federal level, especially in presidential years. It is a major deficiency that must be addressed.” He says this while claiming that the math works and it’s a big winner for them to transfer the burden to the poor while giving breaks to the rich and to corporations. Image is everything to Republicans.

Priebus said that policy mattered and yet indicated no new policy changes to get those “emotional and cultural votes”. They’re just going to focus more on branding and infiltrating, even if it costs them millions to do it, and you silly 47%ers who refuse to take responsibility for your lack of logic (i.e., your insistence that women have a right to make their own choices) and your cultural hang-ups (i.e., wanting to vote) will be fooled this time.

Somehow Republicans think they can continue catering to their donors who insist that the party remain the party of tax breaks and subsidies for the rich, while appealing to people who would be hurt by their policies by insulting them. Democrats are no doubt quaking in their boots.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Connect with Sarah on Post,  Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.